Working with satellite data in the Amazon is not the same as working with it elsewhere. Persistent cloud cover across large portions of the western Amazon makes single-date imagery unreliable. Analysts who are not familiar with Landsat/Sentinel compositing strategies for high-rainfall regions will routinely misclassify canopy conditions or miss deforestation events under seasonal cloud.
Brazil's forest-monitoring datasets are also distinct. PRODES, the INPE deforestation-mapping programme, uses a specific cut-off date, classification logic and polygon format that differs from global products. MapBiomas uses a Landsat-based classification trained on Brazilian land cover, with collection-specific legend conventions that must be understood to interpret results correctly. SICAR, the rural environmental registry, requires familiarity with Brazil's Forest Code and the regularisation workflows it underpins.
Indigenous territory boundaries from FUNAI, hydrography from ANA and administrative data from IBGE are essential context layers that are frequently out of date, overlapping or inconsistently formatted. Knowing how to use them, and when not to trust them, requires field-based experience.
I am based in Acre, in the western Amazon, at the point where Brazil, Peru and Bolivia meet. The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, three indigenous territories and multiple conservation units are within or adjacent to the area I work in most. That geographic specificity is not incidental, it informs every methodological decision I make.
Brazil-specific datasets I work with daily
MapBiomas (Collection 8) · PRODES/INPE annual deforestation increments · SICAR rural environmental registry · FUNAI indigenous territory polygons · ANA hydrography (Otto-coded watersheds) · IBGE census sectors and administrative boundaries · MMA conservation unit boundaries · CAR/PRA spatial files
Location advantage
Based at the triple frontier (Acre, Brazil), I work within the landscapes I analyse. Fieldwork, local institutional knowledge and Portuguese-language engagement with producers, communities and agencies are part of every project.